The day Google+ opened up brand pages, I anxiously refreshed my Gmail inbox all day long until I finally got the email inviting me to create a company page. I knew that by creating the page under my personal account that I’d be the only one able to manage it for the near future. But I really didn’t care; I was just so giddy to get the page set up.
Remember that feeling? I bet you ran out and did the same thing, right? But then what happened? Are you still as excited about it as you were back then, or do you now dread having to go in there? I mean not only do you have to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, HackerNews, and [insert social platform here], but you have to have a strategy for Google+ as well. Calgon, take me away!
Ok, so we know that having a Google Plus strategy is important and we know all the ways that we should optimize our brand page for SEO purposes, but are we managing our G+ community? Here at SEOmoz, we’ve been working hard on making sure that Google+ isn’t thought of as just a third sock, but as an important part of our social (and search) strategy.
Today I want to show you five ways you can use Google+ to engage more with you community, all the while helping your site and brand page show up more in searches. Sound good? Now, let’s walk through some of these tactics. One thing to remember is that with any kind of social strategy, what works great for us, may not be the best for you. So test things out and see if they work. Now, on with the tips!
1. Check your notifications & respond
You probably want to slap me in the face right now, right? I mean come on, OF COURSE you check your notifications… but do you respond? Every single morning when I log into Google+ the very first thing I do is check notifications. I start with the oldest and work my way forward and I respond to as many of them as possible.
Don’t miss this opportunity to let people know you’re out there and that you care about what they’re saying. Here are a few examples you can take advantage of:
- Someone shares your post. Take the opportunity to thank them!
- Someone shares a post with you. They probably did it for a reason, look at the post and respond if it makes sense.
- Someone mentions you in the comments. Read the post and jump into the comments as well. (Sometimes people freak out when you actually respond, that always makes my day.)
- Someone adds you to a circle. Take this time to go through your new adds and add people them to circles if it makes sense. (When the next notification you get is someone excited that you’ve added them to a circle, you’ll enjoy that smile it puts on your face.)
But don’t end your interactions with notifications, as these only show up when someone specifically adds the +brand in a post. What about those mentions that weren’t direct?
2. Search for your brand/name/keywords & respond
The next step in making sure you’re interacting with the community is to see what people are saying about you. Running a search will show you people, pages, posts, hangouts, etc. But I usually filter to only show me Google+ posts so I can see what people are talking about.
Bingo! I ran a simple search for “seo tools” and the very first post to come up is a big ol’ Open Site Explorer logo as part of a post called 31 Essential SEO Tools and Resources and they were nice enough to mention us. This is a great example of when you can reach out and thank someone for sharing a post.
Another example is to simply search for your brand name. If you watched my recent webinar or follow me on Twitter, you likely know that I have a small obsession with cupcakes (ok it’s a big obsession… moving right along). Let’s use a local cupcake shop as an example.
Sadly, they don’t have a Google+ page but lots of people are talking about them here. This is such an awesome opportunity to reach out to your community.
What is your community saying about you that you didn’t even realize was happening?
3. Check the Ripples for your latest content
When Ripples first came out, Casey Henry wrote a great post about using Ripples to connect with influencers. This still holds true today, but the even better part is that Google has added some upgrades to Ripples since then. Now you see all the shares for the specific page you shared, not just the individual share’s Ripples.
These are the Ripples for a post from The Next Web that SEOmoz shared.
So let’s say you see that you have 26 Google+ shares but you only have three shares from your own post, you simply check the Ripples on your post and voila, you can see them all. Additionally, you can add any URL to check and see the Ripples.
From there, the sky is the limit. You could track your posts' Ripples to see who your consistent influencers are. On the Ripples page you can see the top influencers for each post.
These are influencers and stats from three different posts, as you can see, that Rand Fishkin guy is fairly influential. :) I may want to reach out to him more!
But seriously, this is a really great way to see who's sharing your content (or your competitor's content!) and gives you easy access to reach out to them and make content. You can use this information for link building, for community management, for brand management, so. much. win.
4. Mention other brands and people directly
Just as you're looking for posts mentioning your brand, other companies are doing the same thing. So if you want to be noticed, you need to do it as well. The same goes for people, be sure to link directly to blog authors, community members, speakers at events, etc. When someone gets a personal notification that they've been mentioned, how much do you want to bet that they'll reshare the post, or comment or +1 it or take some sort of action? I'd bet a lot! We recently linked to all of our speakers for MozCon and many of the direct shares, comments and +1's came from the speakers themselves.
It's nice to see your name "in lights" and the more you link out, the more they link in. Google+ makes this so easy to do since you don't have to be in circles with people or brands in order to link to them (unlike Facebook). You can do this when you post or even when you comment on someone else's post. So what are you waiting for?
5. Start a chat or Hangout
One thing that I love about Google+ is that interacting with other people is quick and easy since they make it so simple to link directly to someone (see above). In turn, this makes it a great place to start a chat or something along those lines. I love what SEER has been doing with their page, they've been having Q&A sessions on Google+ and their team jumps in and answers questions.
GENIUS! Believe me, we'll be stealing that one soon enough for the SEOmoz page. :)
In addition to using chats/Q&A sessions to reach out to your customers/community, you can always hold a hangout. We have attempted it several times but unfortunately the limit of 10 people has made it pretty difficult for us as we get too many people trying to jump in. However, check out what My Community Manager is doing with hangouts.
First, they hold the Hangout every week at the same time so people know when to expect it.
After the Hangout, they write a post talking about the main topics.
How do you think you could leverage Hangouts and other kinds of chats with your community in Google+?
Your Turn!
I've given you five great tactics to help you manage your Google+ community and interact with your clients, audience, fans, etc. I know there are a ton of other things you can do, but I really wanted to focus on ways to keep your community motivated and engaged (the dreaded word.. ENGAGE). I see lots of people doing similar things on Twitter and Facebook but Google+ is getting somewhat ignored. With its importance in search, it's important to know how to use it to your advantage.
Now it's your turn. Have any questions or additions you'd like to make to this list?
Awesomeness is a part of your work :) but i have a question: these all tips and techniques work for well manage and huge followers page, but what do you think about newly born page how to engage people to increase followers?
Syed,
I'm the admin for the My Community Manager page that Jennita mentioned for the hangouts. It's actually how we grew the amount of people following our G+ page. This first hangout we announced only had about 6 people, but over 30 circled our page. Personally, I think hangouts are one of the most powerful tools to grow your following on G+
I liked this post because honestly, I view Google+ as somewhat of a nussiance. It's just one more thing to have to keep up with, and seeing as we have no followers, I just didn't want to bother. But having some suggestions such as these will likely get me out of my funk. So, thanks!
Jen,
Great insights for brands of all sizes. Of course ripples aren't quite as interesting for smaller brands, but learned something new about the recent features they've added. Search on G+ seems to be one of the most under utulized tools. And of course, thank you for including the My Community Manager Hangout as as example. Not only is this a way for us to engage with the community, but also grow it! We've applied to be whitelisted for Hangouts On Air, so are excited to see how much more engaging it will be once we can share with more than 10 people and also have a recorded version to accompany the blog post.
I love rr sharing comments, blogs, and articles. It is a very good way to give the original person credit, and you can share perspective on the subject matter also. Thanks for the great post!
You guys do a great job with your page, I have mentioned you several times and I always get a thanks or a response, I think that is an essential part of any SM plan...
Agreed. I think people sometimes forget that Google+ really does make it pretty easy to interact with people. If you're looking to grow your circles for SEO benefit (or Community benefits, whatever) it's necessary to put in the work of talking to people. :D
Great Tips for Google + Jen!
It is very useful and helpful post Jennita,
I have read your article really it is very interesting post. It will be useful for every users. Thanks for sharing this pos. I would like to come back for your next post.
Very useful information to leverage Google +. Thanks Jennifer.
Great post, nice information about G+; but it's not effective like facebook.
Thanks Jenitta, very useful tips,
Thanks for the post Jennita,
For brand pages like SEOmoz & others it's relatively very easy for them to get +1 & people are circling them but for some upcoming & new company it is very difficult (not impossible) to increase their overall fans. I'm not talking only about Google+ but in twitter & facebook also. But in facebook you can increase your likes through facebook ads & the same in twitter also via promoted tweets. I hope google+ also develop some kind of way through which small business can also increase their overall google+ community. But the main aim of the company is not just to increase their fans but to participate in the overall interaction with fans & solve their queries. That should be the main goal of each & every company.
Thanks a lot very useful information.
Thanks for the great tips Jen! Sometimes I get lost in the ripples & find myself staring at them for far too long :)
Wonderful Post Jennita. Five rocking points you have mention about the G+. Website Promotion is just going to be a deeper side. Google+ is now integral part of social media we can say. Social signals are impacts a lot and we need to manage them properly.
For newbies with G+, they will find the steps to make their profile in G+ here and Rand have discuss some amazing points in his post. Lastly great thanks to Jennita for this wonderful article.
Great post. I think the key is responding to people, like with any other social network. The problem is that as of yet people aren't as active on the site but once everyone is signed up that will change, hopefully.
Yeah Really Google + is very big social media hub. We should have to wary about the Goolge + account. We have to check our notification time to time and we should have try to make a respond. Google + is the most in SEO Services because it has become very popular and helpful. Currently million users use Goolge plus. Google plus have many good and attractive features which impress for every webmaster.
Thank you so much for the valuable information. I'm quite new to Google+ but I know it can have a pretty substantial impact in SEO if utilized correctly. I've recently branched out on my own and setup a freelance web design business. I setup my Google+ business page under the local business category with the intent of interacting with other local businesses, and with the hopes that my local search results would be bolstered as such. However, I also like the idea of having a company brand page. Is it possible and beneficial to have both, or possible and ill-advised, or not possible? I haven't been able to find any information on this topic. Thank you.
I think people are still trying to figure out Google+ and it's place in today's social media society. It is great to see you posting tips, I feel like the more information people have, the better they can utilize Google+'s potential. When I think Google+ I always think potential. It has some really cool features that other networking sites don't have but I don't think it really has caught on like Google initially thought it would. Although they have been able to dominate search engines and browsers- they haven't had as much luck with social media. They are consistently making changes so it will be interesting to see if they will ever catch up to Facebook- which I believe is their main goal.
Do you suggest using a large amount of categories in the community or do you want to keep it streamlined with only one or two? My thought is that too many categories becomes complicated to control. Google recently added a method to move a post to a new category if the member posted in the wrong section. Although this addition is very helpful, it still is a lot of work.
Thanks Jennita
It’s time for me to create google+ page
Some good ideas, I just need to find people who are using Google+ now.
Some really good points you have mentioned here especially the last second point that is mentioning others brands and people directly and this can be effectively and easily done using Google+.
Thanks for sharing.
Jennita
This was a terrific post with the point by point tips. I hadn't tried the ripples but will get a move on now!
Thanks for sharing.
This post comes just in time for me, +1 jen :)
Recently during the "Salon du Ecommerce de Montréal", Google Tim Reis emphasized on the power of Google hangout he suggested to look at what Macy's is doing...So I share the same advice here
https://plus.google.com/u/0/116142452604357423186/posts
Thank's for sharing your 5 Tips for managing your community on Google Plus. Google plus is a very big social networking site and when you grow your circles you can doing SEO. It is most powerful and advantage SEO method.
Thanks jennita,
Nice Post. I will surely do this and update you if any query found.
Thanks,
We need to master G+ for SEO purpose. I see G+ more like a SEO tool than a Social Marketing tool.
All good thoughts and suggestions here- thanks. I'm thinking some platforms better host particular forms of media and engagement. Twitter is great for roving personalities and finding articles. However, not many people post video or pictures; but, Gplus, much like Facebook in format, allows for a nice layout of pictures, infographs, videos.
One suggestion would be to 'brand' a company's presence on particular platforms. (Example: I place links to articles and sound bytes on Twitter, but reserve Gplus for videos and graphics). If diligent, your company can get associated as the go-to source for particular media info related to your industry. Also, I like the idea of starting a chat; we all know how interesting comment sections turn out to be on posts; a community manager could reguarly engage a large pool of people on Gplus. That dynamic is difficult to replicate on some other platforms.
Great post jennita,
I most admit I am behind the times when it comes to making the most of my social profile. You have given me some great tips on how to make the most of plus one, and that helps to push me in the right direction.
Cheers
Jennifer
Thanks a lot for sharing these amazingly useful tips. With these, it will be quite easy to manage community on Google+ profile. Engagement of the community is really necessary for making your page popular. Google+ quite lagged behind, but with the right usage and proper knowledge it is sure to bounce back.
Cleo
Very nicely complied jennita, really a nice job.
Google plus is a really a must for all those having a brand name. Although the activity is comparitively lower than in case of twitter or facebook, but its gaining strength steadily.
And btw, do you think "+1" has anything do with the brand page on Google Plus?(Am really not much into google plus so has to ask it openly :) )
+1 allowing you to spread the word to let others know what you are upto, great way to keep your audience updated or user engagement.
Yeah, I know what +1 actually is, I was asking about its impact on brand pages!
Really helpful!
Another great tip is to use hashtags. First search your #hashtag to see if there is a conversation about that topic, and then use it on your posts. This increases your audience, people is aware you are a great hub of this information and then follow you or +1 your posts.
I personaly increased from 20 to 170 followers within a month, by using hashtag and sharing very helpful content. This is the Google+ Page I increased followers: Conversion Rate Optimization
But, I definely try to respond better the new followers and improve relationship (comments, +1, etc).
:)
Thanks Jenitta, I'll try some of these tips that you shared with us!
What the social networks need is better tools for agencies who manage accounts for multiple clients. So often it feels like this aspect is overlooked and not just by social networks. Google Adwords used to be pain for managing mulitple accounts, thanfully it's improved now. They need to realise that many brands are going to fully, or in part, outsource this sort of work so it needs to be made as simple as possible.
Nice post!
I think Google + is an absolute must for SEO. in addition, add pinterest to the mix.
Great overview Jen! It's amazing what a little direct interaction between brands and the people who have them in circles can do.
I think it's very important to have unique content on your Google+ page. I like the things SEOmoz does with their linkedin group, and what Distilled does with their youtube channel.
Try to make your Google+ page a destination. Good job Seer!
Thanks Jennita! Very helpful tips, and very well organized I might add! :)
Nicely done, Jennita. I have to say I'm falling into the group that is feeling a slight dread when dealing with some of my social profiles. It's hard for a small shop to properly manage them all.
Great Post!
Google + just changed their interface before my eyes : )
It seems like its way more easy to navigate now. This new interface is more like Facebook. However, it has WAY more sharing options. Google+ even has more privacy settings within circles. This new interface is great!
Thanks! The funny part is I took the screenshots for this post just last night, and by this morning they're out-of-date! Luckily the functionality still exists, and I agree I like the new interface quite a bit. :)
Great post Jen! Re: #2 do you know a way to automate this? In other words, are you doing these searches manually on a daily/weekly basis or do you have a system that updates you to mentions automatically? This would be great for niche-specific KWs too since one of the most common criticisms is not knowing where to get involved.
Thanks again!!
Currently I do these searches a couple times a day, manually. I don't know of a tool that can do this same kind of search for you, since it specifically searches G+ shares and not regular Google results. I'm sure now that Google has opened it up for apps to create tools that someone will be created. But until then, I continue to do it manually. :)
Thanks for the feedback Jen, will keep my eye out for the tools then!
Topsy was scanning Google+ pages but yeah it is not that accurate all the time imo, I too have been looking for things manually with a few pages we work with.
Great post Jennifer, you have given me some really great information to build our Google+ strategy on. Thanks!
nice.....
thanks...
Awesome article Jennita, complete package of guide to get maximum out of google+ page :)
Great post Jennifer!
I think these tactics will be super useful to have your Google+ profile page unrank your competitors if you have online reputation problems or if you do not have enough online visibility.
Great to know about these top tips. These are very useful so I also adopt these and will leaverage my business with Google Plus. So thanks for sharing these tips....